Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 31: Chances

Chapter Thirty-one
Chances

I never noticed before that spring smells so different from every other season. It smells of newly opened flower buds and freshly cut grass, of change that is so potent in the approaching summer air that it makes you feel so light, so unconcerned by everything that bothered you before.

It is when I'm spasming on the wooden table in the back room of The Red Star, my blood boiling beneath my flesh, that I realize this for the first time.

Morna smells of spring and that season in her being is accompanied with the sound of tumbling water filling the room as she holds me down against the table. I wonder if I'll get the chance to see spring again.

“Parker!”

My eyes open to a blurry world filled with unimaginable pain. I let my eyes close again to escape it and try to imagine Westershade in the aftermath of winter.

“Parker, stay awake.” a voice demands from above me. It's Morna. I can feel her hands on my ribs, cutting off my shirt and peeling away the blood soaked bandages.

Lara would be there with me in the spring. Stacey and Noah and Doug, too. We'd go to Fara Lake in Lochton like we usually do during the summertime and spend hours tanning on the dock while the boys swam, talking about our plans for the weekend and our wishes to do exactly what we wanted when we finally finished school.

That fantasy becomes a second world that I slip in and out of while Morna tries to keep me with her, her voice a dull roar in the background as reality swims around me, rippling in and out of focus like the surface of Fara Lake.

The water in the springtime would be cool and the bank would be filled with only us five. We've never told anyone else about the lake or where in Lochton it is. Not even Avery knows yet. No one's had the chance to tell her.

“This wound has festered.” Morna tells me in the real world, her fingers pressing at the inflamed flesh around the Werewolf's claw marks. I sit up with a cry of pain at her touch and she ushers me back down with a string of murmured apologies.

“I'm sorry, child, but what I'm going to do next is going to hurt a lot worse.” she tells me.

Sitting on the dock at Fara Lake, Lara would tell me about her desire to work with animals as something like a veterinarian. Stacey, on the other hand, would tell us all about her own dream of becoming a doctor, of being the kind of someone who could save another persons life.

I imagine that Stacey is the one helping me now, attending to my dying body, and that I have stepped into a future where everything we've ever wanted has come true.

-
-

“I need you to stay here with me now.” Morna says, dragging me out of my own head. The images of spring time evaporate as I slide off the table and into her awaiting arms.

“We need to get you into the bathtub.” she says.

I cling onto her as we walk over to the steaming tub that's pressed up against the left wall. My blood soiled clothing has been stripped away and I'm in only my underwear and bra. My side is still alight with pain and it feels as if it's spreading like wildfire throughout my entire body, weakening my bones to brittle sticks. Morna is there to stop me from falling.

When we reach the tub though, she lets me go and only holds onto one arm to keep me steady as I step into the hot water. I pull my foot out as soon as I've felt it.

“It's too hot.” I tell her.

“It's not.” she argues. “You need to get in. It's the only thing that's going to help you.”

Floating through the clear water is an array of small, pale pink petals and herbs that waft into the air with a sweet scent that reminds me of rose tea.

But despite the smell, death tastes like ashes in my mouth as I lower myself down into the bathtub. The hot water crawls up my legs,than around my waist and up my arms as I bring them under the surface. I grip the edges of the bathtub and hiss a breath between my teeth as the water stings inside my bare wound. I take a moment to breathe before I continue. I shudder at the burning heat that pours into my body once I'm fully submerged.

"Hold your breath," Morna says, her grip tight on my shoulders as I let go of the bath rim.

“What're you doing?” I ask her. I'm still so devoid of energy that my voice remains a weak whisper.

“Saving your life.” she says. “Now hold your breath. I'm going to push you under.”

I take in a deep lungful of oxygen and then close my mouth as I stop resisting and let my body slip under. Morna's hands are still on my shoulders and she holds my back down against the bottom of the tub. Even from underneath I can hear her uttering an incantation in a language I can't understand.

As she speaks, I feel the change in the water. It begins to move like it's being carried in a current with building speed and wraps around my body like a cloth. My eyes are open and I can see the petals and herbs in the water zipping past. The water that is infused with the essence of these plants circles around the four deep, infected claw lines that make up my ripped apart wound.

I become increasingly aware of a tightness in my chest as I slowly begin to run out of breath. I try to hold it for as long as I can to give Morna the time to finish whatever spell she's casting but when it reaches the point when the pressure in my ears is too much to handle I try to rise out of the water.

But I can't. Morna's hands are holding me under and at the weak point I'm at I can't fight back against her. I grab onto her arms and try to yank myself out as she finishes speaking, pulls her arms from my grip, and removes herself completely from the water.

Relief floods in. I push myself up only to have my hands slam against the surface of the water that has been transformed into a seal that represents the solidness of glass. It still moves like normal water but I can't push through it.

I scream as my lungs burn and water jumps down my throat, replacing the little oxygen I had left.

Is she trying to kill me? Oh god. She's trying to kill me.

And it looks like she's going to succeed.

After all those other people have tried killing me in the last couple months I just let my guard down without thinking and gave this woman the perfect opportunity to get to me. Being nice to me, offering to teach me white magic, that was just a trap to get me to trust her.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid!

While I'm cursing myself, another part of me wonders; Morna's a Seer, not a Witch. What reason would she have to kill me?

That is the question that I carry into the darkness when I lose my struggle against the unbreachable surface of the water and fade away.